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Dedication

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND
WILLIAM BERNARD ULLATHORNE,
D.D., O.S.B.,
BISHOP OF HETALONA,
AND VICAR-APOSTOLIC OF THE CENTRAL DISTRICT.

MY DEAR LORD,
{v} In gaining your Lordship's leave to place the following Volume
under your patronage, I fear I may seem to the world to have asked
what is more graciousin you to grant, than becoming or
reasonable in me to have contemplated. For what assignable connection
is there between your Lordship's name, and a work, not didactic, not
pastoral, not ascetical, not devotional, but for the most part simply
controversial, directed, moreover, against a mere transitory phase in
an accidental school of opinion, and for that reason, both in its
matter and its argument, only of local interest and ephemeral
importance?

Such a question may obviously be put to me; nor can I answer it,
except by referring to the well-known interest which your Lordship has
so long taken in the religious party to which I have alluded, and the
{vi} joy and thankfulness with which you have welcomed the manifestations
of God's grace, as often as first one and then another of their number
has in his turn emerged from the mists of error into the light and
peace of Catholic truth.

Whatever, then, your Lordship's sentiments may be of the character
of the Work itself, I persuade myself that I may be able suitably to
present it to you, in consideration of the object it has in view; and
that you, on your part, will not repent of countenancing an Author,
who, in the selection of his materials, would fain put the claims of
charity above the praise of critics, and feels it is a better deed to
write for the present moment than for posterity.

Preface

{vii} IT may happen to some persons to feel surprise, that the Author of
the following Lectures, instead of occupying himself on the direct
proof of Catholicism, should have professed no more than to remove
difficulties from the path of those who have already admitted the
arguments in its favour. But, in the first place, he really does not
think that there is any call just now for an Apology in behalf of the
divine origin of the Catholic Church. She bears her unearthly
character on her brow, as her enemies confess, by imputing her
miracles to Beelzebub. There is an instinctive feeling of curiosity,
interest, anxiety, and awe, mingled together in various proportions,
according to the tempers and opinions of individuals, when she makes
her appearance in any neighbourhood, rich or poor, in the person of
her missioners or her religious communities. Do what they will,
denounce her as they may, her enemies cannot quench this emotion in
the breasts of others, or in their own. It is their involuntary homage
to the Notes of the Church; it is their spontaneous recognition of her
royal descent and her imperial claim; it is a specific feeling, which
no other religion tends to excite. Judaism, Mahometanism, Anglicanism,
Methodism, {viii} old religions and young, romantic and commonplace, have not
this spell. The presence of the Church creates a discomposure and
restlessness, or a thrill of exultation, wherever she comes. Meetings
are held, denunciations launched, calumnies spread abroad, and hearts
beat secretly the while. The babe leaps in Elizabeth's womb, at the
voice of her in whom is enshrined and lives the Incarnate Word. Her
priests appeal freely to the consciences of all who encounter them, to
say whether they have not a superhuman gift, and that multitude by
silence gives consent. They look like other men; they may have the
failings of other men; they may have as little worldly advantages as
the preachers of dissent; they may lack the popular talents, the
oratorical power, the imposing presence, which are found elsewhere;
but they inspire confidence, or at least reverence, by their very
word. Those who come to jeer and scoff, remain to pray.

There needs no treatise, then, on the Notes of the Church, till
this her mysterious influence is accounted for and destroyed; still
less is it necessary just at this time, when the writings and the
proceedings of a school of divines in the Establishment have, against
their will and intention, done this very work for her as regards a
multitude of our countrymen. What treatise indeed can be so conclusive
in this day as the history, carried out before their eyes, of the
religious teaching of the school in question, a teaching simple and
intelligible in its principles, persuasive in its views, gradually
developed, adjusted, and enlarged, gradually imbibed and mastered, in
a course of years; and now converging in many minds at once to one
issue, and in some of them already reaching it, and that issue the
divinity of {ix} the Catholic Religion? Feeling, then, that an exhibition
of the direct Evidences in favour of Catholicism is not the want of
the moment, the Author has had no thoughts of addressing himself to a
work, which could not be executed by any one who undertook it, except
at leisure and with great deliberation. At present the thinking
portion of society is either very near the Catholic Church, or very
far from her. The first duty of Catholics is to house those in, who
are near their doors; it will be time afterwards, when this has been
done, to ascertain how things lie on the extended field of philosophy
and religion, and into what new position the controversy has fallen:
as yet the old arguments suffice. To attempt a formal dissertation on
the Notes of the Church at this moment, would be running the risk of
constructing what none would need today, and none could use tomorrow.

Those surely who are advancing towards the Church would not have
advanced so far as they have, had they not had sufficient arguments to
bring them still further. What retards their progress is not any
weakness in those arguments, but the force of opposite considerations,
speculative or practical, which are urged, sometimes against the
Church, sometimes against their own submitting to her authority. They
would have no doubt about their duty, but for the charges brought
against her, or the remonstrances addressed to themselves; charges and
remonstrances which, whatever their logical cogency, are abundantly
sufficient for their purpose, in a case where there are so many
inducements, whether from wrong feeling, or infirmity, or even error
of conscience, to listen to them. Such persons, then, have a claim on
us to be fortified in their right perceptions {x} and their good
resolutions, against the calumnies, prejudices, mistakes, and
ignorance of their friends and of the world, against the undue
influence exerted on their minds by the real difficulties which
unavoidably surround a religion so deep and manifold in philosophy,
and occupying so vast a place in the history of nations. It would be
wonderful, indeed, if a teaching which embraces all spiritual and
moral truth, from the highest to the least important, should present
no mysteries or apparent inconsistencies; wonderful if, in the lapse
of eighteen hundred years, and in the range of three-fourths of the
globe, and in the profession of thousands of millions of souls, it had
not afforded innumerable points of plausible attack; wonderful, if it
could assail the pride and sensuality which are common to our whole
race, without rousing the hatred, malice, jealousy, and obstinate
opposition, of the natural man; wonderful, if it could be the object
of the jealous and unwearied scrutiny of ten thousand adversaries, of
the coalition of wit and wisdom, of minds acute, far-seeing,
comprehensive, original, and possessed of the deepest and most varied
knowledge, yet without some sort of case being made out against it;
and wonderful, moreover, if the vast multitude of objections, great
and small, resulting from its exposure to circumstances such as these,
acting on the timidity, scrupulousness, inexperience, intellectual
fastidiousness, love of the world, or self-dependence of individuals,
had not been sufficient to keep many a one from the Church, who had,
in spite of them, good and satisfactory reasons for joining her
communion. Here is the plain reason why so many are brought near to
the Church, and then go back, or are so slow in submitting to her. {xi}

Now, as has been implied above, where there is detachment from the
world, a keen apprehension of the Unseen, and a simple determination
to do the Divine Will, such difficulties will not commonly avail, if
men have had sufficient opportunity of acquainting themselves with the
Notes or Evidences of the Church. In matter of fact, as we see daily,
they do not avail to deter those whose hearts are right, or whose
minds are incapable of extended investigations, from recognizing the
Church's Notes and acting upon them. They do not avail with the poor,
the uneducated, the simple-minded, the resolute, and the fervent; but
they are formidable, when there are motives in the background, amiable
or unworthy, to bias the will. Every one is obliged, by the law of his
nature, to act by reason; yet no one likes to make a great sacrifice
unnecessarily; such difficulties, then, just avail to turn the scale,
and to detain men in Protestantism, who are open to the influence of
tenderness towards friends, reliance on superiors, regard for their
position, dread of present inconvenience, indolence, love of
independence, fear of the future, regard to reputation, desire of
consistency, attachment to cherished notions, pride of reason, or
reluctance to go to school again. No one likes to take an awful step,
all by himself, without feeling sure he is right; no one likes to
remain long in doubt whether he should take it or not; he wishes to be
settled, and he readily catches at objections, or listens to
dissuasives, which allow of his giving over the inquiry, or postponing
it sine die. Yet those very same persons who would willingly
hide the truth from their eyes by objections and difficulties,
nevertheless, if actually forced to look it in the face, and brought
{xii} under the direct power of the Catholic arguments, would often have
strength and courage enough to take the dreaded step, and would find
themselves, almost before they knew what they had done, in the haven
of peace.

These were some of the reasons for the particular line of argument
which the Author has selected; and in what he has been saying in
explanation, he must not be supposed to forget that faith depends upon
the will, not really on any process of reasoning, and that conversion
is a simple work of divine grace. He aims at nothing more than to give
free play to the conscience, by removing those perplexities in the
proof of Catholicity, which keep the intellect from being touched by
its cogency, and give the heart an excuse for trifling with it. The
absence of temptation or of other moral disadvantage, though not the
direct cause of virtuous conduct, still is a great help towards it;
and, in like manner, to clear away from the path of an inquirer
objections to Catholic truth, is to subserve his conversion by giving
room for the due and efficacious operation of divine grace. Religious
persons, indeed, do what is right in spite of temptation; persons of
sensitive and fervent minds go on to believe in spite of difficulty;
but where the desire of truth is languid, and the religious purpose
weak, such impediments suffice to prevent conviction, and faith will
not be created in the mind, though there are abundant reasons for its
creation. In these circumstances, it is quite as much an act of
charity to attempt the removal of objections to the truth, which,
without excusing, are made the excuse for unbelief, as to remove the
occasion of sin in any other department of duty. {xiii}

It is plain that the Author is rather describing what his Lectures
were intended to be, than what they have turned out. He found it
impossible to fulfil what he contemplated within the limits imposed
upon him by the circumstances under which they were written. The very
first objection which he took on starting, the alleged connection of
the Movement of 1833 with the National Church, has afforded matter for
the greater part of the course; and, before he had well finished the
discussion of it, it was getting time to think of concluding, and
that, in any such way as would give a character of completeness to the
whole. Else, after the seventh Lecture, it had been his intention to
proceed to the consideration of the alleged claim of the National
Church on the allegiance of its members; of the alleged duty of our
remaining in the communion in which we were born; of the alleged
danger of trusting to reason; of the alleged right of the National
Church to forbid doubt about its own claims; of the alleged
uncertainty which necessarily attends the claims of any religion
whatever; of the tests of certainty; of the relation of faith to
reason; of the legitimate force of objections; and of the matter of
Catholic evidence. He is ashamed to continue the list much further,
lest he should seem to have been contemplating what was evidently
impracticable; all he can say in extenuation is, that he never aimed
at going more fully into any of the subjects of which he was to treat,
than he has done in the sketches which now he presents to the reader.
Lastly, he had proposed to end his course with a notice of the
objections made by Protestants to particular doctrines, as Purgatory,
Intercession of the Saints, and the like. {xiv}

Incomplete, however, as the Lectures may be with reference to the
idea with which they were commenced, or compared with what might be
said upon each subject which is successively treated, of course he
makes no apology for the actual matter of them; else he should not
have delivered or published them. It has not been his practice to
engage in controversy with those who have felt it their duty to
criticise what at any time he has written; but that will not preclude
him, under present circumstances, from elucidating what is deficient
in them by further observations, should questions be asked, which,
either from the quarter whence they proceed, or from their intrinsic
weight, have, according to his judgment, a claim upon his attention.